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Jim Carroll

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Best use of the Freedom of Information Act EVER

Bet you didn’t know that the Irish government used to keep tabs on UFOs? Until 1984, the Department of Defence kept a file on Irish UFO sightings. Since then, the government has been busy with other things (ensuring we have …

Jim Carroll

jimcarroll

Thu, Sep 20, 2007, 14:22

Bet you didn’t know that the Irish government used to keep tabs on UFOs? Until 1984, the Department of Defence kept a file on Irish UFO sightings. Since then, the government has been busy with other things (ensuring we have a world-class health service, chaos-free roads and an uncorrupt Taoiseach, for instance) so the file has remained in a dusty drawer in a departmental office.

It would have remained there too, had Alison Healy not come along and asked to have a look at it

According to Alison’s piece in today’s paper, the dossier contained such sightings as:

A UFO sighting in Boherlahan, near Cashel, Co Tipperary, in 1984 which was “the same shape as a fried egg”, had “some kind of an aerial on top, “was brown in colour” and “made a buzzing noise like a chainsaw”.

A flying projectile over a bog in Donegal in May 1984. An off-duty garda and a farmer were cutting turf near Falcarragh when they heard “a gushing sound”. The garda looked up and saw a grey object travelling at speed over his head. It was shaped like a household iron with fins at the back.

A Cahirciveen shopkeeper and farmer in June 1947 told gardaí about “a circular object moving faster than a motor car” which was “flat and was like a big wheel or large plate . . . the rim was white and it was hollow in the centre”.

Also in 1947, two priests separately saw a strange rocket-like object in the sky the same evening.

However a garda superintendent who investigated the two Co Kerry sightings was satisified it was just a shooting star.

“The pressmen in Killarney like to keep abreast of the times and now that the age of ‘flying saucer’ has arrived, they like to keep in the news, particularly where any money can be made out of it.”

Maybe we could interest current Minister for Defence – and keen amateur journalist – Willie O’Dea in opening a new file on unidentified flying objects?

(Big thanks to Waxy for alerting us to this piece of blog filler – it makes up for all his hissy fits yesterday)